E 



V, 



MR. BARNARD'S ORATIOJ^, 

ft " 

DELIVERED AT ALBANY, 



TO^HTm QT SVI^T, 183S. V 



^' 




Glass. 
Book. 



tU5 



AN 

ORATION, 



DELIVERED BEFORE 



THE HONORABLE THE CORPORATION 



AND THE 



MsSias^ia'S' ^Sff® ®3wa® ^(o):gaii^3iis 



THE CITY OF ALBANY, 



ON THE 



rOVRTB OF JVL7, 1835. 



BY DANIEL D.^bIrNARD. 




PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OP THE COMMITTEE ON THE PART 
OP THE CORPORATION. 



ALBANY: ^v/ash..^ 

PRINTED BY E. W. AND C. SKINNER. 
1835. 

HK 

Vv .Va. .v^ ' 



IS35 



ADVERTISEMENT BY THE AUTHOK. 

TLis Oration is offered to the public as it was written ; con- 
siderable portions of it having been omitted in the deliver/ 
on account of its length. 

There are two or three points in this Address which it had 
been my purpose to have explained and strengthened by elab- 
orate notes in an appendix, as I deemed them points of great 
and growing interest and importance. But the publication 
has been pressed, and causes beyond my control have prevent- 
ed the execution of my design. I can do little more now than 
state that these points relate chiefly to the true theory of the 
respective plans of government which are brought into com- 
parison in the course of my remarks, and what really consti- 
tutes the difference and distinction between them. It has 
seemed to me that many illustrious men, and multitudes of 
honest ones, in this nation, have been misled, by the analo- 
gies that are found between certain of the outward forms of 
the two systems, affording strong temptation, on account of 
some apparent resemblances, to assimilate things which be- 
gin, continue and end in absolute contrast. Popular elec- 
tions, and the exercise of legislative power by the represen- 
tatives of the people, are among the analogous forms of pro- 
ceeding in these diverse organizations. The President too, 
as the head of the executive branch with us, is naturally com- 
pared with the king in whom resides all the fulness of exec- 
utive power, original, unabated, underived, except that a 
nominal dependence on the Governor of the universe is de- 
cently confessed. 

Now there are two very opposite classes of persons and 
politicians who are injuriously affected in their opinions and 
conduct by such views of these very opposite plans of go- 



ir 

rernment. One of these classes learns to be satisfied with 
our system, if, in practice, it turns out to be only a little less 
nrionarchal and aristocratical than that with which it is their 
pleasure to compare it. The other class learns to be content 
with nothing short of pushing the practice under our govern- 
ment, in every particular wherein a point of seeming compa- 
rison can be found with other governments, to the far! best 
possible extreme, in order in this way to establish the differ- 
ence between them. 1 hold both classes to be equally wrong, 
and the influence of both as tending equally and manifestly 
to the destruction of our peculiar organization, and of the 
liberties and happiness of the American people. And I know 
of no better, or other way, of correcting so fearful and hazard- 
ous a bias in the minds of men and parties, as to bring back 
public attention, if possible, to the true basis on which our 
system rests, and to exhibit it in contrast with the true the- 
ory of the opposite system, taking care to strip this latter of 
the disguises which have been artfully thrown around it. 
This will be found to have been kept in view in this discourse, 
as far as the proper business of the occasion would allow. 

I deem it of the last importance that our experiment should 
be carried out as it was begun. On the one hand it was 
never the design of this plan to place the power of the go- 
vernment temporarily or permanently in the hands of indi- 
viduals or of aristocratical associations beyond the effective 
control of an intelligent and virtuous community; and on the 
other, it was never intended that ours should be a govern- 
ment of brute numbers. And whatever person or party fa- 
vors either of these perversions of our noble system, merits, 
not reprobation merely, but the deepest execration. 



ORATION. 



A NATIONAL festival, fellow citizens, is by no 
means an uncommon thing. But it is an uncom- 
mon thing for a nation to celebrate the birth-day 
and establishment of actual, honest, well regulat- 
ed, constitutional liberty. This is our case ; and 
by this is our national festival of The Fourth of 
July, distinguished from that of any other nation 
now or ever on the earth. And this difference is 
not inconsiderable. For, other nations, the most 
favored and the most free, whether on this side of 
the Atlantic or the opposite, have been content to 
celebrate events which, after all, were productive 
of nothing better than partial and temporary re- 
lief — where the symptoms have been administered 
to instead of the 'disease, which perhaps was all 
that could be done in the case, and where of course 
there was alleviation but no cure. Such was the 
English revolution of 1688. And such was the 
French revolution of 1830. But such was not the 
American revolution of 1776. 



The event which we have now met to commem- 
orate is without a parallel. It was not the obtain- 
ing of a charter — a reluctant grant or concession 
of rights wrung from the hand of a master ; it was 
not the sudden relaxation of the iron grasp of op- 
pression ; it was not the receiving of a boon dropt 
from any man's favor ; it was not the repeal of an 
obnoxious statute ; it was not the plunge of the 
steel into the heart of the betrayer, or the fall of 
the bolt of vengeance on the head of the spoiler ; 
it was not the decapitation or the expulsion of one 
tyrant that room might be made for another or for 
many tyrants ; and finally, it was not the violent 
casting off of a few burthens of a bad system which 
had become absolutely intolerable, with intent to 
keep that system with its remaining evils and make 
them perpetual. There was a declaration of In- 
dependence — the severance of a mighty empire — 
the birth of a new member in the family of nations. 
And this was very much — but had this been all — 
if this new nation had been to take its place be- 
side the others without any radical change in the 
system of government — in short, if nothing had 
been done but the renouncing of allegiance to 
one set of rulers and the swearing of allegiance to 
another — quite sure I am that I should not be stand- 
ing here to-day to offer to you my congratulations 
on the events of the fourth of July 1776. No, my 
friends — if there was on that day a public declar- 
ation that the people of these states, in their po- 
litica capacity, were and of right ought to be in- 



depeftdent of the crown and authority of Great 
Britain, there was also the more important declar- 
ation that they were and of right ought to be free. 
if it was then announced that the form of govern- 
ment under which they had lived had become des- 
tructive of the proper ends of government, an in- 
tention was at the same time intimated to institute 
a new government, with its powers organized in 
such a form as should seem to them most likely to 
effect their safety and happiness. If their purpose 
was then announced of assuming a separate and 
equal station among the nations of the earth, they 
did at the same time announce to the world, as the 
very point from which the frame of their govern- 
ment should take its rise, a new principle, which, 
at least for centuries, had not been recognized 
even as an admitted truth," and which had never 
been regarded as an indispensable element in the 
structure of a state— That principle was " that all 
men are created equal." 

I do not mean to say that this truth itself was 
then first published to the world. As a natural 
truth it resulted from the order of creation by which 
the family of man took descent from a single pair. 
Asa religious truth it was proclaimed by Moses 
and the Prophets, and authoritatively taught in the 
mission of Jesus Christ. But as a political truth— 
as a truth which challenged the homage of every 
man, and of which every man who was the subject 
of a social compact might claim the benefit— as a 



8 

truth which struck with palsy the right arm of hu- 
man power over tlie human subject, by a broad 
challenge to the various pretences on which that 
power had been set up and exercised — and above 
all, as a truth which was to be the corner-stone of a 
great political edifice, now to be erected for the 
first time on such a principle — the announcement 
was new — new in its terms, new in its import, and 
new in the application that was to be made of it. 

It may not ill comport with the object I have in 
view to dwell for a moment longer on this great 
characteristic principle of the Declaration — the 
political equality of all men. This was not a sen- 
timent dictated by any spirit of levelling radical- 
ism. It was not intended thereby to declare that 
all men are equally great or equally good, any 
more than that all men are equally tall, equally 
short, or equally fair ; nor was it intended to affirm 
that the social state may be dispensed with, or that 
governments are either useless or necessarily op- 
pressive ; nor that all, the simple and the wise, the 
evil minded and the virtuous, have an equal right to 
share in the administration of affairs ; nor that the 
foundations of society must be broken up, its wealth 
distributed or spoiled, its relations sundered, and 
the refinements of life sacrificed. None of these 
things were meant. But it was intended, by this 
sentiment to express the terms on which men do, 
or ought to meet in the formation of a social com- 
pact ; that the only condition on which they ought 



to treat about the structure of a state is that of 
perfect orig'mal equahty of rights and privileges 
among all the members — all agreeing however to 
impose on themselves such restrictions and condi* 
tions in regard to the exercise of their natural 
rights and privileges, as shall be deemed essential 
to the safety and well being of the whole commu- 
nity ; that the law of the strongest is no longer 
to be tolerated; that no man, be he priest or 
king, or by whatever name in the book of po- 
litical jugglery he may be called, can have an 
original, natural or hereditary property in an- 
other man's person, services or effects ; and that 
all the machinery contrived by his wit or malice 
for driving forward the vessel of state On the 
basis of such a claim, however gilded and bril- 
liant that machinery may be, however closely 
jointed and hinged, however nicely lubricated, and 
however smooth in operation and effect, is in 
fraud of rights which will ultimately be vindicated, 
and contains within itself the most fearful ele- 
ments, because dependent after all for its propul- 
sive energies, on that sort of physical power which 
cannot always be managed or controlled — which 
being too closely pent up and too far heated has 
sometimes been known to rend the very heavens 
with a fatal and destructive explosion. These 
things were among the teachings of this doctrine 
of equality as announced in the Declaration ; and 
it taught also that as one man cannot have a na- 

2 



10 

tural right of property in another man or in any 
thing which belongs to him, so when the forms of 
civil government should come to be settled they 
should be so constructed as to recognize and pro- 
tect this natural equality, in a manner to consist 
with the necessary provisions tor mutual and uni- 
versal protection and the preservation of public or- 
der and peace. It was the natural and necessary 
result of this doctrine, that the source of all politi- 
cal authority, of all political honors, and of all po- 
litical privileges, was at once found in a direction 
opposite to that to which men had been accustom- 
ed to look for these blessings. Before that time, 
particular individuals, particular families, and cer- 
tain limited associations, deemed themselves, and 
were deemed, to be the original, undisputed and 
exclusive possessors and inheritors of all political 
power and privilege. The fountain was now 
opened in a very different quarter. As for free- 
dom, wdth all the immunities implied in that com- 
prehensive term, men would henceforward regard 
that as the inalienable gift of the God who created 
them. And as for power and honors, hencefor- 
ward these could be exercised and enjoyed, on no 
pretence whatever, but by warrant of authority 
from the body of the people — the prevailing col- 
lective sense of the wisdom and intelligence of the 
whole community to be gathered for this purpose 
in some determinate and duly appointed mode of 
procedure. 



11 

Such, my friends, is that sound doctrine of po- 
litical equaUty, contained in the Declaration, as I 
understand it. And now, for the first time in the 
flight of earthly years has this principle met with a 
just and efficient recognition in an established 
system of human government, by its adoption in 
the constitution of these states and the constitu- 
tion of the United States. 

The limits of this address will not allow me to 
shew by any minute analysis and examination^ 
how well this principle is embraced and preserved 
in our system. It will be seen at once, however, 
that it is necessarily exclusive, if rightly adminis- 
tered, of every thing in the form of monopoly, and 
every thing in the guise of peculiar privilege. By 
giving to the frame of the organization such a de- 
sign as that its chief purpose and effect shall be to 
embrace and cover the equal rights of all, there is 
cut off at once the whole body of abuses which 
grow out of the unhallowed pretence that govern- 
ments are not constituted for the benefit of the peo- 
ple, but that the people are created for the benefit 
of governments. By adopting constitutions, as 
the written letters of instruction from the mass of 
the community to those who may be entrusted with 
the administration of affairs, prescribing with ex- 
actness the powers to be employed and the condi- 
tion and manner of their exercise, an end is put at 
once to all pretences of original and inherent 
authority, whether in individuals or in oligarchies. 



18 

and demonstration is at the same time made how 
impossible it is that men should take by charter 
from a monarch of earth any gift of freedom to 
which they have not a prior and superior title 
from the Monarch of Heaven. By establishing a 
system of ojfficial accountability ; by providing for 
the periodical termination of all official authority ; 
by popular elections to fill up vacancies from the 
ranks of the people, in which every citizen having 
the requisite qualifications, in his intellectual and 
moral character, and in the ties which bind him to 
the country, has his equal and effective share ; by 
this the whole doctrine of legitimate succession is 
exploded, with all the absurd and abominable pre- 
tensions and practices which belong to it. And 
with the fall of legitimate successions in any 
country, where the danger of substitution from 
aristocratical unions is at the same time taken 
away, falls of necessary consequence that system 
of burthens, exactions and impositions, the essen- 
tial badges of arbitrary power wherever exercised, 
the natural result of the doctrine that men are not 
created equal — a system which recognizes in the 
sovereign a paramount title to every man's pro- 
perty and the returns of every man's labor in the 
realm, and which is often employed in gathering up 
the scanty earnings of honest industry, and the 
poor reward bestowed on patient toil, throughout 
the land, to be spent on projects of licentiousness, 
ambition or revenge, or to be poured into the lap 
of bloated and luxurious ease. 



13 

Thus, if our frame of government, as finally set- 
tled in the constitutions of these states and of the 
union, does in fact embrace and carry out the 
great leading doctrine of the Declaration to its 
practical results, as we believe it does, it is im- 
possible not to be struck with the mighty differ- 
ence between that system and the prevalent sys- 
tems of government in the world before that day. 
And this was the great achievement of the Revo- 
lution ; and this is the event, the most stupendous, 
beyond all doubt, in the temporal history of man, 
which we have met to commemorate ; and such is 
the occasion and the subject of the American na- 
tional festival, so sublime, so exalted, so noble, so 
distinguished from the festive occasions of the 
other nations of the globe. 

And, my friends, it is not to be doubted that a 
day like this must have its peculiar and appropri- 
ate business, which is not to be disregarded by 
one who occupies the position which has been as- 
signed to me in the ceremonies of its observance. 
The day belongs first to our fathers, and after- 
wards to us. It may be improved to our profit, 
but it is consecrated to their glory. We may en- 
joy our inheritance, but we must not rob them of 
theirs. And, I confess, it seems to me by no 
means difficult so to conduct our meditations, dur- 
ing the time allotted for this exercise, that both 
objects shall be embraced, if not accomplished. 
In doing this indeed, we cannot choose but walk 
over well-trodden ground. Yet, for my part, I 



14 

console myself with reflecting that I am address- 
ing myself to Americans — to the children of the 
sons of Liberty, and that no such heart can listen, 
though it were for the thousandth time, to the 
simple story of the suflerings and struggles of his 
ancestors in their state of colonial dependence ; 
that no such heart can recur, though for the 
thousandth time, to the scenes on which they have 
left the immortal stamp of their greatness and prow- 
ess and virtue ; or can hear repeated, though for 
the thousandth time, the names of the statesmen, 
the heroes and the battle-fields of their times ; 
that no American heart can do this without warm- 
ing at once into involuntary and irrepressible en- 
thusiasm. 

I prefer, therefore to adopt the good old fash- 
ioned mode of address, used in times past on 
these occasions, and to carry my own mind and 
yours as much as possible back to the contempla- 
tion of the events — now beginning to grow old — 
of colonial and revolutionary times. In this con- 
templation, it is my purpose to take the opportu- 
nity of illustrating, by the examples and the prac- 
tices afforded by the brief review, the beauties 
and the blessings of those old forms of govern- 
ment, which prevailed with some modifications 
every where up to the time of our Revolution, and 
which continue to prevail every where, out of 
our own country, with scarcely an exception 
worth stopping to name. 



15 

And I must take leave here to remark too that 
in conducting a review of the atrocious passages 
which mark the whole period of our connection 
with Great Britain, I cannot claim the merit of 
being affected with any excess of abounding ten- 
derness towards the government and the people 
as they then existed in the land of our origin. 
Nor can I learn to handle these passages with any 
peculiar gentleness of touch or pressure, out of 
an apprehension that I may, perchance, contribute 
to revive or perpetuate the enmities which were 
engendered by them. Those who look for friend- 
ship, beyond that of commercial relationship, be- 
tween two governments so opposite and so irre- 
concileable with each other, as those of Great 
Britain and the United States, will wait long for 
the coming of the promise and the confirmation 
of their faith. Their ways are not as our ways. 
I speak of the government and of the body of the 
British nation which support it. They may not 
choose to quarrel with us because they may have 
learned already that it would not be for their in- 
terest ; but they do not love us. They will buy 
with us, sell with us, talk with us, walk with us, 
and so following — and this will a Jew do with a 
Christian j perhaps they may eat with us, drink 
with us, and pray with us, as one christian should 
with another — but they do not love us ; the causes 
of jealousy lie too deep, and for aught I can see 
can never be removed while they adhere to their 
political organization, and we adhere to ours. I 
know there were British hearts in the time of the 



16 

Revolution, with too much nobleness of nature 
not to appreciate the genius, the valor, and the 
virtue of the men of the Revolution, and the great- 
ness of their cause. I have not forgotten Chat- 
ham ; I have not forgotten Burke ; and I have not 
forgotten the noble exertions which both these 
great men made, not in behalf of the colonists, but 
to prevent the destruction of what they believed 
to be the British constitution, and to preserve the 
integrity of the British empire. These men be- 
longed, however, to their own country, and not to 
our country. They were her champions and not 
ours ; and the success of their counsels and ef- 
forts would have been our ruin. 

As for Mr. Burke, while he argued with all the 
vigor of his matchless skill against the ministerial 
plans of colonial taxation, and rejoiced in the repeal 
of the Stamp Act as a measure both of wisdom 
and of justice, yet we must not forget, that he was 
the apologist and the advocate of a most odious 
measure of the administration with which he was 
connected — a measure by which, in the spirit of 
unaccountable infatuation, the whole merit of the 
repeal of the Stamp Act was lost in the silly pride 
of a declaration of parliamentary supremacy over 
the colonies. It would be amusing if it was not hu- 
miliating, to contemplate the mighty Burke, speak- 
ing in behalf of this British mother, and proclaim- 
ing that though it would be very impolitic, perhaps 
improper, in her to treat her children over the wa- 
ter with any species of cruelty, yet they must du- 



17 

tifully remember, that the venerable old lady has a 
perfect constitutional right to exercise cruelty and 
injustice towards them whenever she chooses. 

As for Mr. Pitt, before the glories of that name 
were merged in a title — it was nobly declared by 
him, that that kingdom " had no right to lay a tax 
upon the Colonies." But he was then in opposi- 
tion J and certainly some changes did come over 
the spirit of his constitutional opinions, when, as 
was quaintly said of him at the time, he sunk into 
a peerage, and stepping into office as the head of 
an administration, called to his aid the counsels of 
some of the bitterest enemies both of himself and 
the Colonies. Whatever may have been his opin- 
ions both before and after the period of his humilia- 
ting premiership, and however ardently and elo- 
quently those opinions may have been expressed, 
yet it should not be forgotten that it was one of the 
earhest acts of his administration, under the lead 
too of Grenville — the odious author of the system of 
coloniaf taxation by act of parliament — to pass a 
law — who would beheve it if it was not recorded ? 
Yes, the parliament of Great Britain, controlled by 
the Earl of Chatham, passes a law — to abolish the 
legislature of the colony of New- York until that co- 
lony should consent under the order of parliament, 
to make certain provision for the troops of his Brit- 
tanic majesty, which he had chosen to quarter on 
the people of that province. Nor ought the Earl 
of Chatham to be relieved of his share of the dis 
tinction so justly earned by the brilliant, witty and 

a 



18 

officious Charles Towiiseiid, by his plan — perfect- 
ed and passed during this administration — " for 
drawing a revenue from the Colonies without giv- 
ing them oftence ;" a plan which was so eminently 
successful, that it precipitated the war, and resulted 
in the severance of the empire which it was inten- 
ded to preserve. 

But it is time to address our minds more directly 
to the consideration of those events which ought 
to occupy a large share of our thoughts on this day. 
I have referred to the distinction in principle and 
and in fact, amounting indeed to broad contrast, 
between our political organization, and the preva- 
lent political organizations of the other nations of 
the earth. I desire also to have it noted as we 
pass, that of the old systems, at the date of our re- 
volution, not one would compare, for liberality and 
freedom, with the actual government of Great 
Britain. To say nothing of the oriental despot- 
isms, in no part of Europe were the people deemed 
to be in the possession of the most common and 
ordinary rights of humanity, except in England and 
its dependencies. And yet a recurrence to facts 
will show how little of the true doctrine of liberty 
was recognized even by the British government, 
and how strong and striking is the actual contrast 
between their system and that under which we have 
the happiness to live. We shall see what is the 
difference between English freedom and American 
freedom ; and we shall see this by taking a view of 
the political condition of the Americans while they 
were the subjects of the British crown. 



A§ political equality — an equality of rights in all 
things relating to life, Hberty, property, and the 
pursuit of happiness, with the governed and not the 
governers recognized as the fountain of all author^ 
ity, was the basis of our system, so the very reverse 
of this proposition was the basis of the Enghsh 
system. Down even to the time of the late reform 
bill, no subject of England ever dreamed of insist- 
ing on the existence of a political right, except by 
virtue of a charter, or of something in the nature of 
a charter. And what are charters ? Royal grants 
of specified privileges — as a jailor might say to the 
miserable tenant of one of his dungeons, come out 
of that wretched cell ; of my clemency I grant you 
the liberty of the prison grounds for one hour eve- 
ry day. This is a royal charter ; and these char- 
ters are of the essence of the British constitution, 
excluding, in their very terms, every idea of a claim 
of right on the part of the subject, and substitut- 
ing for such right a boon, as from a superior to an 
inferior, as from one who is rich to those who are 
poor in the gifts of nature and freedom, to be held 
on the uncertain and precarious tenure of the sov- 
ereign's good will and pleasure. This has been the? 
extent — no more — of all the freedom which Eng- 
hshmen have actually enjoyed since the great day 
of Runnymede. From that day the Enghsh people 
have claimed the privilege of granting away their 
own money to the sovereign, whenever he should 
demand it, because king John gave them leave to 
do so. They have claimed the privilege of having 
justice administered to them without the ceremony 



20 

of bribing the judges, because John consented and 
agreed they should so have it. They have claim- 
ed the privilege of relief from unjust and arbitrary 
imprisonments and of trial by jury, on the word 
and promise of John. Happy, thrice happy peo- 
ple of England — fortunate and favored, above 
your fellows, — in that God created John, and put 
it into his heart to bestow on you the gift of free- 
dom ! To this it is doubtless owing, that although 
John died and was buried, yet the liberties of 
England have been preserved and perpetuated — 
preserved too, amid perils by the house of Plan- 
tagenet, and perils by the house of Tudor, and 
perils by the house of Stuart, and perils finally, by 
the committing of public authority to earthen ves- 
sels of German importation. 

And now my friends we are prepared to see how 
much of real freedom belonged to our fathers, 
while they remained the subjects of the British 
crown. And it is evident in the outset, that, so 
long as that connection continued, they must take 
their liberties, more or less, on the condition im- 
posed on all the subjects of England — under char- 
ters. The highest notion of liberty to which Eng- 
land had attained, was that of liberty by charter ; 
and the colonists of course, very well knew, that 
the highest order of liberty to be expected from 
England by them, was liberty by charter. Hence 
the anxieties and controversies, the hopes and the 
apprehensions excited among them by the subject 
of their charters. 



21 

The Colonies, it will be remembered, were not 
all in like condition with respect to their govern- 
ments. In some there were governments, under 
royal charters, granting certain authority and pow- 
ers directly to the people. Thus was Massachu- 
setts situated until her charter was taken away. 
In others, there were governments under the ori- 
ginal proprietors, to whom the crown had been 
pleased to grant the property, with charters con- 
ferring on them the power to establish the govern- 
ments. Such was the government of Maryland un- 
der Lord Baltimore. In others, the governments 
were conducted by the viceroys of the king, with 
such a share exercised by the people as the sover- 
eign saw fit to allow. Such was the government 
of the colony of New-York from the time when the 
Duke of York ascended the throne of England. 

From the beginning, there was a common and 
natural anxiety among the colonists to hedge 
themselves in from too much royal inspection, by 
special charters. Massachusetts obtained a char- 
ter from Charles I. within a year of the date of its 
patent from the proprietors. Plymouth, although 
having her own free constitution, framed on board 
the May-Flower, before the colonists touched the 
land, yet earnestly but in vain sought to obtain a 
charter. Connecticut and New-Haven, Providence 
and Rhode-Island governed themselves, as self con- 
stituted republics, for twenty-five years, and then 
took their charters — some of these plantations 
having despatched a special agent to the king for 



22 

the purpose. Such was the anxiety of the colo- 
nists to secure themselves in this mode against un- 
limited and arbitrary power. And whenever spe- 
cial charters were not obtained, they insisted nev- 
ertheless, as they did to the last, on the common 
rights of English subjects ; and claimed, as beyond 
all doubt they had a right to do, in common with 
Englishmen every where, the broad protecting 
shield of the charter of Runnymede. It would 
have been strange indeed, if, while the British 
throne was found to be high enough and broad 
enough to overshadow the Pilgrims in their far dis- 
tant assylum in the wilderness, m«_£|-na charta should 
have been discovered to be a parchment of such 
narrow dimensions that it could not be made to co- 
ver an inch of territory beyond the island of Great 
Britain. At all events, the colonists were not the 
men to submit to such constructions. They cover- 
ed themselves at all points as well as they could for 
the day of their battles. As far as they were able 
they caused themselves to be clothed with special 
corporate powers, well aware that if these should 
fail them, they could then fall back upon their re- 
served rights as Englishmen under the general con- 
stitution of the kingdom. We shall soon see how 
much value ought to be placed on that sort of free- 
dom which depends for security on royal charters. 

It would have been something to boast of, if when 
the king had once made a solemn grant of political 
privileges, the constitution and the law had forbid 
the assumption of those powers. But directly the 



23 

contrary was the fact, at least so far as public cor- 
porations were concerned ; and nothing was neces- 
sary therefore, but to liken the Colonies which had 
received charters, to the case of city and borough 
corporations in England, and the power of absolute 
and complete control was established in the king, 
as effectually as though the farce of endowment by 
charters had never been attempted — and whatever 
the king might not find it convenient to do, in the 
premises, in person, the courts would accomplish on 
the motion of the king's Attorney General. Hence 
we find that within five years, after Charles had 
granted his charter to Massachusetts, constituting 
that colony a complete republic, with authority to 
the freemen to elect their officers, the governor 
included, he unceremoniously puts the Prelate Laud 
with others in commission over all the New-Eng- 
land Colonies, with power to make and unmake 
governors, revoke privileges and liberties, and gen- 
erally to do in the premises whatsoever should 
seem good in the eyes of their wisdom and purity. 
Accident alone made this a barren sceptre in the 
hands of the commissioners. They formed a 
splendid scheme of administration. The charter 
of Massachusetts was to have been cancelled — the 
whole territory of New-England was to have been 
divided into twelve lordships, and allotted in sever- 
alty to twelve of the original patentees of the Eng- 
lish Plymouth Company, to whom the freemen 
should be tributary for their lands. A governor- 
general was to have been appointed, and a new 
eity built as the seat of the empire. Within thirty 



years of this period, no less than three other at- 
tempts were made, under similar commissions, 
to arrest the Colonies in the exercise of their un- 
doubted privileges. These having failed, the sec- 
ond Charles, shortly after, took the franchises of 
the Massachusetts Colony into his own possession, 
through the forms of a judicial proceeding. Oth- 
er proceedings of a similar character against Con- 
necticut and Rhode-Island, followed on the acces- 
sion of James II. to the throne, and nothing re- 
mained to complete the subjugation of the whole 
of New-England, but the presence of Sir Edmond 
Andross as governor-general. His oppressions and 
atrocities were only ended by his violent arrest 
and imprisonment, and by the English Revolution 
of 1688, and the expulsion of his tyrant master 
from the throne of his ancestors. 

This event, the revolution, so much boasted 
in England, certainly was the occasion of tempo- 
rary relief to the Colonies. But its real value to 
the cause of freedom here — whatever it might have 
been elsewhere — was not very considerable. The 
new king, William, found reasons for delaying to 
grant to Massachusetts the benefit of a new char- 
ter for three years ; it was finally granted only as a 
fit occasion and means of compelling that colony 
to surrender a portion of its ancient privileges ; 
and before his reign was ended, a strong effort 
was made, by a bill in parliament, utterly to abol- 
ish the charters of all the Colonies at a single 
blow, and to reduce them to the state of mere de- 



25 

pendencies on the crown. This latter example, 
by the way, was not lost on his German successor. 
A similar attempt was made in the very beginning 
of the reign of the first George. And if these be- 
nevolent attempts were not successful, it was not 
because these sovereigns, or their advisers, enter- 
tained any doubt about the power of the crown or 
the parliament to withdraw the light of the king's 
favor opened on their subjects through the medi- 
um of charters, whenever it should be deemed fit 
and convenient to do so. 

The statements now made are enough to shew 
of how little worth was that liberty which flowed 
to British subjects from royal colonial charters. 
But the colonists, as I have already intimated, had 
another royal title to freedom which they were 
never backward in asserting. Wherever coloni- 
al or proprietary charters had not been granted at 
all, or had been withdrawn, the colonists still 
claimed the benefits of magna charta and of the 
constitution. Among the most important rights of 
Englishmen, held by this tenure, was the right to 
participate in the legislative power, so far at least, 
as that power was employed in the regulation of 
of internal government, and especially in the rais- 
ing of supplies and revenue. In England, this 
right had come to be tolerably secure, from the 
terrible examples of vengeance with which its vio- 
lations had been visited. And it was just the want 
of such examples in the Colonies, which embolden- 
ed the worthy representatives of the monarch here, 

4- 



26 

openly to proclaim that the people of the colonies 
enjoyed no immunities which did not flow from 
the mere grace and will of the crown. It will be 
seen however, that this genuine doctrine of roy- 
alty, however insisted on, did not deter the colo- 
nists from setting up their claims and actually exer- 
cising the right, through their representatives in 
the colonial legislatures, wherever they were not 
prevented or interrupted by tyranny or force. The 
colony of New-York will afford us as good an ex- 
ample for illustration as any other. The people at 
large in this colony never enjoyed the doubtful 
blessing of a special charter. The government 
was first proprietary, and afterwards royal — both, 
from the surrender by the Dutch until 1688, under 
that prince of tyrants, James II. ; and for twenty 
years after it became an English colony, the colo- 
nists were not allowed the slightest share in the 
government. The first English governor was the 
sole and unassisted fountain of all law and of all 
justice. The second condescended to take the 
advice of his council, and actually called to his as- 
sistance a few justices of the peace — and under 
both, taxes were not only levied, but actually laid 
through the instrumentality of their sheriffs and 
constables. The notorious Andross succeeded, 
and signalized himself as usual. He interposed in 
a controversy of ecclesiastical jurisdiction belong- 
ing to the Consistory of the Dutch Church at Al- 
bany, and arbitrarily imprisoned a magistrate of the 
town. He controlled the court of assize by pre- 
siding in it in person ; he obtained supplies from 



27 

the people by forced benevolences ; and he en- 
larged his mastei^'s revenue from quit-rents, by 
compelling the inhabitants to take new grants for 
lands already patented to them by his predecessors. 

These proceedings had thrown the colonists in- 
to a ferment, which manifested itself in an espe- 
cial manner on Long Island. And as the next 
governor. Colonel Dongan, on his arrival in 1683, 
happened to land in the midst of the malcontents 
on the eastern end of the Island, he was induced, 
evidently after taking counsel of his fears, to pro- 
mise that laws and taxes should be imposed for the 
future, only by a general assembly. For the first 
time in October of that year, an assembly of dele- 
gates from the people actually met at New- York. 
But it was soon found that the power of the people 
was merely nominal, and no legislative act under 
this administration, has been deemed of sufficient 
authority to be preserved and admitted to a place 
in the body of our colonial laws. 

The first time the people of this- Colony were 
admitted to any substantial participation in the 
legislative power, was in 1691, and even then the 
house of assembly was not organized without the 
exclusion of the two Quaker members elected from 
the county of Queens. At this time the so call- 
ed glorious revolution had been accomplished in 
England, and English freedom had been establish- 
ed on the firm basis of one tyrant expelled and an- 
other imported. The Prince of Orange was on 



28 

the throne ; and Henry Sloughter — poor and avar 
ricious, weak and licentious, a man who perform- 
ed the most awful function of human authority, the 
signing of death-warrants, while, as his historian 
says, " his excellency's reason was drowned in 
his cups" — Henry Sloughter ruled over their ma- 
jesties' province of New-i'ork. But, in spite of 
discouragements, this first effective legislative as- 
sembly of the Colony, of immortal memory, put 
forth its resolves and doctrines of freedom with 
the most dehberate and unbending^ boldness. This 
body numbered among its members a Graham, a 
Van Cortland, a Kipp, a Beekman, and a Van 
Schaick. These were the men, and their associ- 
ates, who were among the first to give a legislative 
form to an American bill of rights. They propos- 
ed an act, declaring what were the rights and pri- 
vileges of the colonists, and that act passed into 
a law. Amongst other things it, in eflfect, affirm- 
ed the right of the people to be represented in as- 
sembly, and repudiated the notion that their enjoy- 
ment of this right depended on the grace of the 
crown. This was strong and off'ensive matter for 
the digestive organs of William, especially as 
there was no doubt some remaining irritation from 
the contents of the chalice in which he had been 
obliged to pledge the English nation at the time of 
his accession. He succeeded, however, in keep- 
ing down the draught for five years, when his bile 
rose, and he rejected the whole potion. 

But it was not the abstract right only which was 



29 

disputed ; there was a constant effort to narrow 
down the actual popular share in the legislative bu- 
siness of the country, and to make it as little avail- 
able to the people as possible. And from the time I 
have referred to thence forward, the annals of this 
colony are filled with the struggles of the people to 
preserve their property and their freedom — such as 
it was — from the rapacity and the tyranny of their 
royal governors. Truth to say, these worthy rep- 
resentatives of the parent government were found 
faithful in their vocation ; and in their dealings 
with the colonial legislatures, not having the fear 
of expulsion, nor the fear of the block, nor the 
fear of God before their eyes ; there was no ex- 
ample of insolence or intolerance left them by 
the Charleses and the Jameses of England, of 
which they did not contrive to better the instruc- 
tion. The people might elect their members of 
assembly; but the governor claimed the right of 
neglecting or refusing to call them together for 
just as long a period as he thought proper. The 
fitting time in his judgment, of course, might never 
arrive, unless he could be compelled by some state 
necessity. To effect this object the people in- 
sisted that no money should be raised for the pub- 
lic service, but through their representatives in as- 
sembly. So far the point was carried ; and when 
the exigencies of the state, or the privg^te necessi- 
ties of the executive, which were always urgent — 
for among these officials there was more than one 
Cornbury, " hunted out of England by a host of 
hungry creditors" — whenever these exigencies and 



30 

necessities became pressing, and arbitrary exac- 
tions began to be fruitless, or were discovered to 
be hazardous, then it was that a consent might be 
obtained to call together the assembly. Once in 
session, this body generally took the precaution, 
before they would enter on the business of the 
supplies, to do themselves and their constituents 
some justice, by passing acts for the correction of 
abuses in the administration, and for the security 
of their common rights. To acts of this descrip- 
tion, the titled and famishing beggars at the head 
of the government were often compelled to yield 
their assent. But they had a way of escape in re- 
serve. The supplies once obtained, the governor 
had nothing to do but to dismiss the assembly 
forthwith, and send home to England any obnox- 
ious laws which might have been passed with his 
consent but against his will, to undergo capital ex- 
ecution there by the veto of the king. 

But there were other methods still, of overrul- 
ing the effective power of the people in the admin- 
istration of their affairs. When the assemblies 
came to the subject of the supplies, it was a favor- 
ite point with the governors to insist that a per- 
manent system should be adopted and the supplies 
granted, at the least, for a series of years. If this 
point was carried, the hated presence of an assem- 
bly might be dispensed with, and the commander 
be left for a considerable time to tread the decks 
alone, in all the pride and insolence of power. 
But if this project failed, it was easy to take what- 



31 

ever the assembly should give, and then dismiss the 
members to their homes. The point of attack 
would now be changed. The old body of legisla- 
tors being disposed of by proclamation, the proper 
writs are issued for a new election. The first thing 
now to be done is, that the governor either in per- 
son, as Fletcher of this colony was accustomed to 
do, or by his retainers, as others practised, should 
take the field at the elections. Bearing a smile 
about the lips, and a cloud on the brow ; carrying 
a bribe in one hand and a scourge in the other ; sur- 
rounded by a multitude who are rejoicing in the 
beams, direct or reflected, of royal favor ; and fol- 
lowed at a little distance, by other groups, who are 
pressing forward to share in the sunshine, under 
the firm conviction, that there is a sensible chilli- 
ness of the atmosphere in the shades of private 
life, quite prejudicial to their delicate constitu- 
tions — under such circumstances and with such ap- 
pliances, he goes forth to meet the electors, and of 
course not without considerable, though it may fall 
short of complete success. Having done all that 
authority and corruption can accomplish here, his 
next step is to call the new members together and 
make trial of their tempers. If a majority, ready 
to betray the people and serve the king, have not 
been already secured, a judicious and gentle ap- 
phcation of offices and rewards will probably prove 
quite efficacious ; for experience has unfortunately 
shewn, that in nearly every considerable body of 
men there may always be found here and there one 
of such tender sensibilities as to be utterly incapa- 



ble of holding out. against such dehcate attentions. 
Having at last succeeded in finding an assembly 
fitted to his purpose, the governor may now laugh 
at the people, and bid them defiance. No assem- 
bly can be dissolved without his proclamation or 
dismission ; and no new election can be held with- 
out his order. The people are excluded. Power, 
unlimited and unchecked, settles in the person of 
the governor ; and the very forms of freedom, in 
some degree preserved, are made to stand as but- 
tresses for the support of a gloomy despotism. 

But I must forbear to pursue this point ; for I am 
admonished that it will soon be time for me to be- 
gin to think of relieving your patience. And yet, 
fellow citizens, it is impossible not to feel how lit- 
tle justice can be done to our theme, and how little 
to the occasion of our meeting, within the brief 
space to which this exercise must be confined. — 
Nothing truly has ever so oppressed me, as the dif- 
ficulty of selection and of condensation, in my pre- 
paration for this occasion — to select from materials 
where the metals are all gold and the stones all 
sapphire ; and to condense and chain down thoughts 
by the feeble instrumentality of language, which 
crowd the mind and swell the heart to the very point 
of bursting. Will you bear with me then, my friends, 
while I pursue my general subject so far at least, 
as to utter some things which cannot be wholly 
omitted at this time, without a species of treason 
to the day of independence and the cause of hu- 
man freedom. 



33 

In all my references thus far to our colonial his* 
tory, it has been my object to shew how little real 
security there is for the liberties of the people in 
the most liberal and favorable of those systems of 
government which prevailed every where previous 
to our revolution. I do not allow that the colonists, 
because situated at a distance, were exposed to great- 
er oppressions than the subjects of the same govern- 
ment who were seated under the shadow of the 
throne at home, for any other reason than that their 
rulers dared to deal with them in a manner in which 
they did not dare to deal with the others. On the 
contrary it seems to me, that the people of Eng- 
land and the people of America have both been 
obliged " to bide their time" ; and that what the in- 
habitants of the British Island suffered in their day, 
and what the American colonists endured in theirs, 
was only the legitimate fruits of the system of go- 
vernment to which they were both subjected. The 
British monarchs subsequent to the Stuarts have 
been naturally cautious about trying experiments on 
their people at home. One king a fugitive, and an- 
other wanting his fair proportions by a head, of the 
race which had immediately preceded their own, 
were spectacles to cool their ardor, and cause some 
sensible abatement in their demands. But the sys- 
tem remained and still remains. The king is still 
king by the Grace of God, and therefore the peo- 
ple are free by the Grace of the king.* This is the 
theory, talk as they will about the rights of Eng- 
lishmen ; and by how much better than this the prac- 

* Note &. 

5 



M 

tice is, by so much are the people gainers from Ijxit- 
ing succeeded in shifting the securities they held, 
from the king's word of promise and clemency on 
to the king's fears and apprehensions. And here 
is the secret of just the ditierence between their 
condition and what was the condition of the colo- 
nists. Until 1688, there was no very great amount 
of difference between them. After that, it was the 
difference between a cautious government at home 
and a fearless, reckless government here — a govern- 
ment here, which would not be convinced of the 
hazards of their game — of the possibihty of resist- 
ance — until the proofs were exhibited in blood. 

I think 1 am justified therefore in attributing the 
evils which the Colonies suffered at the hands of 
the British government, not so much to any mal- 
administration, as to the very genius of the govern- 
ment itself. According to this system the people 
are in some sort the property of the sovereign. For 
his pleasure they were and are created. Doubtless 
of all sensations in the human heart the most grate- 
ful is that of feeling power. This first necessity 
of tyrants is supplied by an obedient and submis- 
sive people. And the next most important use of 
the people undoubtedly is that of furnishing from 
the store-house of their means and their industry, 
whatever may be required to satisfy the need, and 
to gratify the passions and the pride of their mas- 
ters. 

The British constitution, begotten, no body can 
tell how, between the king and the people, after being 



35 

hunted through the mazes of royal charters, acts of 
grace, books of irreconcilable precedents, bills of 
rights, and statutes of parliament, here a little and 
there a little, if found at all, is discovered to be a thing 
so strangely put together, of such doubtful complex- 
ion, and of such a double aspect, that it is difficult 
to determine which of the parties its features favor 
most. Now it looks like oppression, and now it 
looks like protection. At one moment its nurses 
can discover some distinct traces of resemblance 
to Liberty, at the next it is clearly the very child 
of Despotism. 

The great point in dispute, as you all very well 
know, between the parent country and the colo- 
nies ; that which brought on the war ending in 
total separation, was whether the Parliament had 
a constitutional right to tax the Colonies without 
their free consent in their own local legislatures. 
About this there was great disagreement among 
the English doctors — some of whom were so per- 
plexed that they disagreed with themselves. Sir 
William Jones declared in the most positive man- 
ner against the right. But Edmund Burke was 
so clear in favor of it that he joined in the pas- 
sage of a declaratory law to that effect. The 
great William Pitt uttered his solemn conviction 
that it was unconstitutional for Parliament to lay 
a tax on the Colonies ; but the same great man 
found it perfectly constitutional for Parliament to 
issue a peremptory order to a colonial assembly 
to lay a specific tax on the Colony, for furnishing 
** salt, vinegar, cider and beer" for the comfort of 



36 

his majesty's troops quartered on the province, 
and in case of refusal, he found it also perfectly 
constitutional for Parliament to abolish the colo- 
nial legislature, until the order should be complied 
with. 

Now there is, in England, but one only mode of 
determining all disputes about what is constitu- 
tional and what is not. Whatever measure is ad- 
opted, for the time being, by the king, or by king 
lords and commons, and acquiesced in by the na- 
tion, that is constitutional — and the nation is to be 
deemed to have acquiesced if it do not break out 
into open rebellion, or at the least carry on its re- 
sistance with so high a hand as to compel the 
king, or the king lords and commons, to recede. 
Bearing this in mind, we have nothing to do, but 
to run our thoughts over the tract of our colonial 
annals, to satisfy ourselves that there is no spe- 
cies of fraud or of oppression, of wrong or of vio- 
lence, of insolence or of despotism, which may 
not be inflicted on its subjects, by the govern- 
ment of England acting in the very spirit of its 
its constitution. 

Pursuing this suggestion, we are brought to 
contemplate the condition of men, driven by per- 
secution and intolerance to forsake homes of 
cultivation, refinement and endearment, and seek 
their rest in a far distant wilderness, voluntarily 
surrounding themselves with a neighborhood of 
ferocious savages. Abandoned by those who 
should have been their protectors, they give them- 



37 

selves up to the guidance of God, and, under him, 
rely on themselves and their own resources. But 
it is only for a season that they escape the notice 
and the care of their guardians. The constitu- 
tional power of England, which first expelled 
them from the land of their fathers, now follows 
to seek them out in their new abode, to challenge 
their allegiance, and reduce them to submission. 
The farce of granting charters is acted over. It 
is constitutional to give them ; it is constitutional 
to take them away. It is constitutional to govern 
with them ; it is equally constitutional to govern 
without them. 

But in spite of discouragement and difficult}^, the 
colonies begin to put on the port and vigor of ma- 
turity ; and as they are the property of the mother 
country, she must take care to make them useful 
to herself. For this purpose it is constitutional in 
her to publish orders and pass acts to regulate 
their trade, and restrain their manufactures. As 
customs paid in England are a source of revenue 
to the king, the colonists are not to export any 
thing to any country which is not first landed in 
England and discharged of its tribute money there. 
And as the resources of the king will always be 
increased by increasing the ability of his subjects 
in England to pay, the colonists shall contribute 
to that abihty. Their distant commerce shall be 
carried on only in ships built in England. If they 
would have wine, oil and spirits from Portugal, 
they must receive them through a merchant in 



38 

England, that lie may fatten on the commissions. 
They may trap the beaver, which abound in their 
country, but they shall send the fur to England to 
be made into hats for their use. They may dig 
and smelt the ore so abundant in their soil, but the 
iron shall be sent to England to be converted into 
implements, even the most common, for their ne- 
cessities. All this is constitutional. Nobody 
doubts it — at least in England. 

And other things are constitutional. England 
has a host of high-born and noble paupers, and it 
is her duty to provide for these. In the exercise 
of her constitutional authority she remits ^these 
leeches to her Colonies, to bear sway, and gorge 
themselves on her subjects there. England too 
has her convict-thieves, depredators, and robbers, 
and she finds it perfectly constitutional to trans- 
port them to her American colonies, and plant 
them there in companionship with her American 
subjects. 

But the constitutional power of England displays 
itself in other forms. War has been the pastime 
of kings from the beginning. From the time when 
the Prince of Orange was called to the throne 
down to within twelve years of the breaking out of 
our Revolution, a period of seventy-five years, there 
were five general wars in Europe, occupying near- 
ly fifty out of the seventy-five years, in all of which 
E)ngland was a party. These were wars of succes- 
sion, wars of ambition, wars of jealousy, wars of 



39 

rivalship ; wars involving the affairs of kings and 
princes only, and in which the people had no con- 
cern — except to fight the battles, to bear the expen- 
ses and to endure the horrors. In one of these 
Wars, England, with the aid of the Americans, con- 
quered the Canadas. In another, she acquired a 
monopoly for supplying the Spanish settlements 
with negroes for thirty years. In the others she 
gained nothing. But what was the condition of her 
Colonies during these wars ? Spain, her enemy, had 
possessions on one side of them ; France, her en- 
emy, had possessions on the other. Around them 
and pressing closely upon them, was a savage pop- 
ulation, treacherous, merciless, implacable, gree- 
dy of spoil, and ravenous for blood. Spain fed the 
mahce of these demons in the South. France kin- 
dled their rage in the North and West. The work 
of death and desolation began. There was the 
knife for the scalp, the hatchet for the brain, the 
brand for the dwelling, and the stake and the fag • 
got for the victim. The aged, the infirm, the do- 
fenceless ; the mother, and her infant born and un- 
born — these were the objects of attack ; and no- 
thing was heard of but burnings, and butcheries, and 
tortures, and captivities. During the whole period 
of seventy -five years just referred to, the colonists 
had scarcely an interval of actual or unapprehen- 
sive quiet ; and no quarter of the country was ex- 
empt from murderous incursions. The awful tem- 
pest of blood and fire which fell on Schenectady in 
the first of these wars, was repeated on the settle- 



40 

ments about Casco, and on Deerfield and Haver- 
hill, and Roanoke, in the next. Then came the 
wars in which the Spaniards themselves in one 
quarter, and the French themselves in another, took 
a chief part, though still aided by the Indians ; and 
it were endless to recount how the Americans act- 
ed and suffered in them all. Suffice it, that the 
kings of England engaged in these wars in the ex- 
ercise of a constitutional authority which was nev- 
er disputed — no matter though the inevitable con- 
sequence was to involve their American Colonies 
in a series of calamities and distresses too horrible 
for thought or endurance. The last of these wars 
to which I have referred, that of 1756, was indeed 
brought on in consequence of French encroach- 
ments on the American possessions of the king of 
England. The chief points of direct encroachment 
were at Nova-Scotia, on the Ohio River, and on 
our own northern and western frontiers. With 
Nova-Scotia, the colonists had no other concern 
than such as they had, being subjects of the British 
king, with his possessions in Germany. The oth- 
er encroachments concerned them more nearly — 
but then the constitutional power of the parent go- 
vernment had been exercised in a way which led to 
these very encroachments, and produced that aw- 
ful train of sufferings, exertions and sacrifices which 
fell, in consequence, on the ill-fated Colonies. — 
Early in the reign of the first George, it was pro- 
posed, from Virginia to the government at home, 
that a purchase of land should be made from the 
Indians on the Ohio and a settlement planted there. 



41 

which at the time might have been easily accom- 
phshed, and which would have defeated the de- 
signs of the French, even then well understood, 
and given security to the border settlements of the 
states in that quarter. But,^ besides that the go- 
vernment found it always politic and constitutional 
to confine their American Colonies as far as possi- 
ble to the sea-board, on account of the conven- 
ience of bringing her naval and military persua- 
sives to bear on any spirit of disobedience which 
might manifest itself among them; besides this, it 
so happened that the apprehensions and ambition of 
the new king furnished him, about that time, with 
reasons of state for keeping well with the court of 
France ; and hence it became entirely constitu- 
tional for his ministers to discourage all attempts 
to interrupt the French in their design on the 
Ohio ; and even to allow them, shortly after, with- 
out a word of remonstrance or of disapprobation, 
but on the contrary by connivance and tat:it con- 
sent, to enter on the territory of his majesty's pro- 
vince of New- York, and there to erect a fort — that 
of Crown Point— and plant their hJatteries almost 
within ear-shot of the peaceful dwellings of his 
faithful subjects of that colony. This very con- 
duct of the king and his advisers opened the way 
to an attempt to estabhsh a long projected connec- 
tion, by military posts and papal stations, between 
the French possessions on the great River of the 
north, and the French possessions on the great 
River of the south — by which the English Colonies 
would have been enclosed and penned up for easy 

6 



42 

destruction on a kind of narrow isthmus, between 
a wall, stretching from the gulf of St. Lawrence to 
the gulf of Mexico, planted with cannon, and 
guarded by the bayonet and scalping knife on the 
one side, and the ocean with an extended, expos- 
ed and indefensible coast on the other. It was 
this constitutional conduct of the sovereign, who 
claimed the allegiance of the colonists, opening 
the way to so much exposure and to so much im- 
minent danger, which led to the celebrated con- 
vention held at Albany in 1754, and to the forma- 
tion by that convention of a plan of union for the 
mutual defence and security of the Colonies. That 
union was acknowledged by the paternal govern- 
ment to be indispensable to their safety — Yet, at 
such a moment, with the cloud fully charged and 
the bolt just ready to fall on their defenceless heads, 
at such a moment did this humane government, in 
the exercise of its constitutional authority, forbid 
that projected union, except on the condition that 
the colonists should then, in the day of their ex- 
tremity, yield to it the right to impose taxes on them 
by act of Parliament ! These infamous terms were 
of course indignantly rejected, to the immortal hon- 
or of the colonists ; and nothing was left for them 
to do but to make the best preparation they were 
able for the bloody conflict which could no longer 
be delayed. Long before war was actually de- 
clared between France and England, it became 
necessary to put on the armor and light the torch 
in this region. In 1755, the Baron Dieskau with 
a heavy force, was sweeping. from the north down 



43 

on the place where we are now assembled, with in- 
tent to wrap this city in flames. No less than six 
thousand provincials assembled at Albany, and 
marched out to give the enemy battle, whom they 
defeated with signal slaughter on the banks of Lake 
George. This afforded temporary relief; but the 
war was to be prosecuted. In the next year, there- 
fore, twenty-one thousand provincial troops were 
ready for service ; but it was constitutional for the 
government to place the command in incompetent 
hands, and nothing was accomplished. In the 
next, as little was done, except that the miserable 
Earl of Loudon, having drawn off" his main forces 
from the proper defences of the country for a boot- 
less expedition to Halifax, left an army, chiefly of 
provincials, to be surrendered to the enemy at Fort 
William Henry, and then given up to an indiscri- 
minate massacre by their Indian allies.* In the 
next year, the command was transferred from Lou- 
don to Abercrombie, to give to this new general 
an opportunity to sacrifice two thousand lives, 
every one as valuable as his own^ in a rash and 
hopeless assault on Ticonderoga. In the next 
year, happily, the tide of war turned under better 
auspices, and Canada fell* But it was yet four 
years before it was found convenient or practic- 
able for the king of England to make peace with 
his enemy the king of France — during all which 
period the colonists, especially at the south, did 
not escape the perils of a state of war — and when 
at last the subject of peace came to be agitated, 

• Note B. 



44 

it was seriously and anxiously debated in England 
whether the interest of the government did not re- 
quire that Canada should be again yielded up to 
France, to serve again in her hands, with the help 
of the Indians and the emissaries of the Pope, as 
a salutary check on the too rapid and dangerous 
growth and expansion of colonial population and 
power ! Doubtless it would have been perfectly 
constitutional to have done so. 

But, finally, the peace of 1763 was concluded, 
and the government of England was left free to fol- 
low its inclinations in the exercise of new constitu- 
tional powers over the Colonies. Scarcely was the 
war ended, when the king, feeling the pressure of 
burthens from the conflicts which he and his prede- 
cessors had sustained with their continental neigh- 
bors for three-quarters of a century nearly in suc- 
cession, resolved to rob his Colonies for relief. 

The more effectually to prevent any freedom in 
their trade and to secure its benefits to England, 
the government first determined on a rigorous en- 
forcement of its navigation acts. The masters of 
vessels were commissioned as custom-house offi- 
cers, to seize and bring in for condemnation all ves- 
sels and cargoes of a suspected character ; and to 
make the condemnation quite secure, the right to 
try the questions at issue by a jury was taken away, 
and jurisdiction committed exclusively to a judicia- 
ry of the king's appointment, whose powers were 
enlarged expressly to meet the case. Then came 



45 

the Stamp Act striking at the legal validity of writ- 
ten contracts which had not paid tribute to the king. 
Then came the Declaratory Law affirming the right 
of taxation ; and then came the commentary on 
that declaration in the shape of a duty — madly per- 
severed in — on tea. Following the resistance 
which these constitutional proceedings met with, 
came the act to shut up a Harbour which God and 
the ocean had opened ; the act to subject the peo- 
ple of Massachusetts to a corrupt and pensioned 
judiciary ; the act to exempt the king's servants in 
that colony from trial and withdraw them to Eng- 
land for protection ; the act to abolish the legisla- 
ture of New- York ; and finally the act to starve 
New-England into submission by interrupting their 
fisheries. 

But enough was not yet done, and the constitu- 
tional resources of England are not easily exhaust- 
ed. British troops are now poured into the Colo- 
nies. The affair of Lexington follows, and eight 
American citizens are murdered at the first fire. 
Charlestown is wrapped in flames ; and American 
blood is spilled like water at Bunker's Hill. All 
this is but the beginning of that constitutional ar- 
gument which, by the space of seven years, the 
military barristers of the court of England were 
instructed to address to America to persuade her 
to submit to taxation and plunder at the instance 
and pleasure of the king and parliament of Great 
Britain. This argument was continued in every 
possible form which could suggest itself to those 



46 

skilled in this kind of casuistry ; and so animated 
and enlivened was it throughout, and so full of 
characteristic episode by the burning of towns, vil- 
las and cottages, by cold-blooded murders, by 
shameless violations, and by the torturing, poison- 
ing and starvation of prisoners, that one is led ir- 
resistibly to the conclusion that those by whom it 
was conducted had received their latest and most 
effective lessons from the examples and practice 
of the unhumanized wretches with whom they were 
associated, and who are known to take their chief 
delight in cruelty and blood. It may safely be af- 
firmed that in no civilized age or country had war 
been carried on with such ruthless and gratuitous 
barbarity. Whatever may have been the charac- 
ter of this contest before the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, after that and from that moment, it was 
a war waged by one independent nation on another 
independent nation for the purpose of conquest. 
Yet the British still affected to treat the resistance 
of the Americans as a rebellion ; and on this pre- 
tence, there was no mischief and no cruelty which 
they did not feel at liberty to practice. The very 
commencement of the campaign of 1776, was mark- 
ed with atrocities. Soon after the taking of New- 
York, nearly one-third of that city was burned 
down. It was pretended by the enemy that the fire 
was kindled by Americans ; and a British historian 
of the period relates that many individuals, on a 
bare and unsupported suspicion, of course without 
trial, without proof, and without any opportunity 



47 

for defence, were unceremoniously and inhumanly 
precipitated into the flames which was consuming 
their dwellings. In no case did there seem to be 
any disposition to soften the asperities and rigors 
of war ; on the contrary every opportunity was 
taken to aggravate its horrors. This was mani- 
fested on the very first movements of the combined 
army after the landing of his majesty's German 
mercenaries at Long Island. The familiar jour- 
nal of an Enghshman, now just pubHshed, alluding 
to these movements, cooly relates that on surpriz- 
ing some American out-posts, " the men were all 
put to death with the bayonet." A near relative 
of my own, and an eye witness to the retreat of 
the American army from Long Island on that me- 
morable occasion, has often related to me a scene 
of horror which occurred in the morning after Gen- 
eral Washington had effected his wonderful escape 
and the transit of his troops from Long Island to 
the city of New- York. It will be recollected that 
this escape was effected in the night, and so silent 
and complete was it, that out of an army of 9,000 
men, who were in their lines at night-fall, within 
six hundred yards of an enemy more than double 
their number, not a soldier remained, to the great 
surprize and mortification of the enemy, when the 
morning disclosed the place of their encampment. 
After all the troops had been transported, a party 
of Americans, not in any wise attached to the 
army, and unarmed, volunteered to bring over some 
stores and property of inconsiderable value which 
had remained. It happened that while the last 



48 

boat's company which had ventured on this enter- 
prize were employed in completing their ladings 
the dense fog, which till that moment had rested: 
on the East river, was suddenly lifted up like a cur- 
tain, by which they were exposed to a party of the 
disappointed and enraged enemy. They met the 
fate of the men who had been surprised at the 
American out-posts. Every man was put to death 
with the bayonet — all were murdered, though on 
their knees, and begging for quarter with cries 
which rent the air, and could not be heard without 
a thrill of horror. 

And what gives to this war its most awful char- 
racter is that nearly all its cruelties were delibe- 
rately and systematically practised. Such was the 
refusal to give quarter wherever it was deemed 
safe to refuse, and the consequent murders com- 
mitted in cold blood ; such was the treatment of 
our prisoners — too horrible even for belief if the 
facts were not so well authenticated; and such 
was the destruction of towns and settlements by 
fire, especially in the memorable campaign of 1777. 
The Americans were informed by public proclama- 
tion from the highest authority, that " the existence 
of a single habitation on their defenceless coasts 
ought to be a constant reproof to their ingrati- 
tude." And truly this generous enemy took care 
not to leave to the inhabitants of Esopus, and Fair- 
field, and Greenfield, and Norwalk, a single stand- 
ing monument of that ingratitude which he so 
much deprecated ! 



49 

But it were useless, even if our time was not al- 
ready too far spent, to dwell on those scenes, so 
familiar to every American ear and heart. They 
stand as everlasting monuments between England 
and America ; to cover the one with shame, and 
to crown the other with glory. The light which 
beams on our beloved country from Trenton and 
Saratoga, and Yorktown, and many an other well- 
fought field, can never fade. The brightness of 
the names of Warren, and Washington, and Green, 
and a host of others, which are hung up as partic- 
ular stars in her firmament, can never grow dim. 

But her chief glory, that which shines the bright- 
est, and will endure the longest, was the achieve- 
ment of the Fourth of July, 1776. Then it was 
that she efiected the memorable transition from a 
state of colonial dependence to the condition of a 
free and independent sovereignty. Taking her 
station in the family of nations, she threw down 
the gauntlet, and bid the world defiance. She 
stood alone in the strength of her new and distinc- 
tive principles and of her cause, and presented her 
rocky breast to the impotent rage of the billow 
and the storm. From that moment, having stept 
without the circle of parental authority, she stood 
on firm ground of her own, holding England and 
her people, as the rest of the world, " enemies in 
war, in peace friends." The wand of the enchant- 
ress was broken ; the spell of her constitutional 
witcheries was dissolved ; America was free ! 

7 



50 

It remains only, my friends and fellow-citizens, 
that we should remember that we are the children 
of the men who set up a new standard of freedom 
and civil government in the earth ; that this was 
done at the cost of sacrifices too vast for computa- 
tion ; and that to us has been committed the re- 
sponsible charge of carrying forward the experi- 
ment which they began. As the new system 
has stood for half a century and more, so, for 
aught that is vicious or defective in itself, it may 
stand for centuries on centuries, and as long as 
time and the earth shall endure. It has its foun- 
dations in the eternal principles of truth and of 
right ; yet it may fail ; it may even break down in 
our keeping ; and it will if we ourselves shall be- 
come recreant to those principles — wanting the 
virtue and the purity, and the intelligence, and the 
faithfulness, and the integrity of our fathers. Let 
us hope at least that no such calamity shall befal 
in our day. Let us make this day the occasion 
for renewing in our own names, in behalf of our 
common country, that same solemn pledge which 
our fathers gave in support of the same glorious 
cause — the pledge of " our lives, our fortunes and 
our sacred honor." Here, as on a common altar 
and before our common God, let us unitedly swear, 
that the Republic shall receive no detriment at our 
hands : that it shall live, by His blessing, while we 
live ; and that our children shall receive it from us 
as we received it from our Sires, undimmed in pu- 
rity, undiminished in lustre, great, happy, glorious 
and free ! 



51 



NOTES. 



NOTE A. 

It is true that in England it is usual to regard the liberties of the people 
an resting in contract between the king and them. " Breaking the origin- 
al contract" was deemed good cause for expelling James II. ; that is, it 
was deemed good cause of war. Admitting the contract, what equaliiy 
is there between the contracting parties, and what are its sanctions, and 
the remedies for its violations ? The king promises to abate so much of his 
prerogative, and to alloio so much freedom ; and on these conditions the 
people agree to be his obedient subjects — such is the equality between the 
contractors. The agreement has no sanction bat the honor and in.terest of 
the promiser ; and if violated, the remedy is not in the constitution, but 
beyond it — in ^car. 



NOTE B. 

Major Rogers, an American partizan officer in this war, states in his 
" Journal," published in 1765, that his brother had died of stna!l-pox at 
Fort William Henry a few days before the surrender ; and tliat after the 
conquest, the body was dug up and the scalp taken by the Indians. This 
could not have been done from the mere lust of blood. The srcaljjs were 
doubtless paid for. Maj. Rogers learned, through a prisoner, tiiat t!ie \n- 
dians themselves, in a state of alarm, " greatly blamed tiie French for en- 
couraging them" in their barbarous practices. 



ERR4TUM. 

Page 4, line 14 from top — " as" should read " fhan." 



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